Chapter XVI
HARVEST AT ANDERBY
"Foreman would like to see you, m'm."
Violet entered the dining-room and looked hesitatingly from John to Mary. Foreman's real request was for the master, but since his illness Mary had given her orders that all such messages should be brought to her. Violet's upbringing had been on strictly evangelical lines, in the fear of a God who loveth righteousness and hateth a lie. She found it difficult to accept Mary's creed that small fibs are a very present help in trouble.
She looked so unhappy about it that John noticed her perturbation.
"What does foreman want, d'you know?"
Violet did know. She had been talking to Fred Stephens, leaning across the kitchen window sill, and discussing in hushed tones the probability of a strike on Monday. No one talked about anything else just now in Anderby. But again she perjured her soul.
"I don't know, sir."
John's attention drifted again to his fried bacon, and Mary followed Violet from the room.
"That was right, Violet. Remember that Mr. Robson's not to be worried about these sort of things. I'm the farmer these days till the doctor says he's all right again."
Violet sighed. There would be many confessions of falsehood to be muttered that night into her pillow before she went to bed. Life was very hard in Anderby—to say nothing about Fred Stephens who must be persuaded not to strike even if she had to throw over Percy to do it.
Mary hurried along the passage. She, too, found life rather difficult in Anderby just then—difficult, but exciting, and because exciting, then tolerable. The strike really was coming. Neither native caution nor the foreman's contempt nor the force of habit had availed against the rhetoric of Hunting. Anderby intellect had yielded to his eloquence as it would never have yielded to argument. The Flying Fox became the head-quarters of an active organization for industrial enlightenment. Coast as an unofficial friend of progress at last found himself a person of importance in an appreciative world. Waite was enabled to turn his ill-fortune to good account. The labourers from various farms awoke to the fact that they were victims of an unbearable tyranny—when they had time to think about it. Mrs. Robson was going to have her hoped-for fight with something real.
It was all very satisfactory.
"Well, foreman, what is it now?" asked Mary.
He removed his cap and scratched his head.
"It's a bad job this, missus."
"It's a bad job for us, but it's worse for the men. Have they any strike pay put by, foreman? They can't have. It hasn't gone on long enough."
"Why m'm, it's like this, you see. Mr. Rossitur comes down and says 'You're all beasts. You've got to be men,' an' rates 'em worse nor Parson on Advent Sunday. And he makes 'em all uncomfortable like a pup wi' a kettle tied t' his tail. Then comes Mr. Hunting an' gets up t' union. An' when they've got a union they mun hev a strike. For what's t' use o' unions unless you strike, they say? And what's t' use of striking unless you do it when it makes most row? And when's that? Harvest time o' course. So they'll strike."
"I know," said Mary. "That's just it. You put it very well. Why, we're all speakers now in Anderby! I've never heard so much talk in all my life as there's been in the last three weeks. I talk too. You should have heard me on at poor Bert Armstrong! He hardly knew whether he was on his head or his heels by the time I'd done with him."
Foreman grinned. "Ay. I heard tell o' that."
"Well, if the worst comes to the worst, I suppose we can rely on you and Shepherd and Mike. What about those Irish men, foreman?"
"Well, them as is friends o' Mike's will do as 'e says. I don't like t' looks o' Mike these days, Mrs. Robson, I tell you straight. It isn't that 'e's drinking worse nor usual. He allus was a good 'un for that. It's way 'e acts when 'e is drunk."
"What sort of way?" asked Mary, frowning.
How tiresome of Mike to add to her troubles when she had so many things to think about!
"Oh, swearing an' taking on' an' offering to fight anyone what says a word agin you. And talking about that there Mr. Rossitur—saying he was at t' bottom of strike an' all, an' if he hadn't come there wouldn't have been no trouble."
"Well, that's true in a way, I suppose."
"Ay, mebbe. But's it's doing no good down i' t' village and it's doing no good to Mike. Waite's like a great mule since 'is row wi' Mike, and Mike's fair crazed over any o' t' union men. I wish ye'd speak to 'em, m'm. There'll be trouble in Anderby one of these days."
"Oh, there'll be trouble all right. But I don't see what I can do. I'll try and speak to Mike. Is there anything else?"
She returned to finish her tea with John. Poor John! She knew he suffered no less from the changed conditions because he was inarticulate. Sometimes she wondered whether it hurt more to move as he moved, half understanding, among the hostility of a once friendly wold, or to live as she lived, continually estimating and expressing the measure of her own emotions. Perhaps, with her, one pain dimmed the consciousness of another, while John clung steadily to the thought of coming trouble at Anderby.
His mute misery appealed to her desire for action. Besides, it was all part of her plan of life by which she must speak to foreman, she must pacify Mike, she must in short be Mrs. Robson of Anderby Wold.
She invented trivial pretexts for working in the kitchen that she might be the first to hear an ominous knock at the door. With her sleeves rolled above her elbows she stood for hours, her hands deep in flour, a self constituted vanguard to repel the attacks of John's enemies.
"You're very busy these days, honey," he remarked with his slow smile as Mary rose from the table and began to replace her large white apron.
She was busy with the buttons and for a moment did not answer.
"There's a lot of fruit to bottle," she said at last. "Sarah Bannister has sent me some more damsons from the low orchard."
"Must you do it to-night? You look a bit fagged out."
He rarely commented on her appearance. She wondered if it had altered lately. That would not be surprising.
"Oh, I'm all right, and you see the fruit was picked in the wet, and will go bad if I don't bottle it at once. Sarah said I should."
"Didn't you say we were going over there?"
"Yes, Sarah's letter is on the mantelpiece if you want to see it. She asked us to go on Wednesday and stay for tea."
"She knows I can't get away in harvest."
"Oh, yes, we can, for the evenings, while we're only reaping."
He looked up at her drearily.
"Are we going to have any harvest this year, honey?"
"Why, of course. Even if the men do come out for a bit—more fools they—it's only what has happened in lots of places. They'll have to come in again when their savings are gone—which won't be long. And anyway we can carry on with the few who'll stay."
"Ay. I suppose we'll manage somehow. But do you think we're right to hold out? Willerbys would give in if we would."
She bent across the table towards him, leaning with her hands outspread on the linen cloth, her strong arms bared to the elbow. The concentrated energy of her quiet voice had gathered to itself all other force and light from the room.
"Are you afraid, John?" she asked.
He shifted in his chair and spoke irritably. "No, not exactly. But all this tomfoolery and speechifying is a bit too much for me. I'm not a boy to begin all over again getting used to new ideas."
"A boy! Why, anyone would think you were an old man from the way you talk, instead of being only just over fifty. This is nothing but what's going on all over the country, good gracious! It will be all over and done with in a week or two, and the men will realize how they've been fooled and come back to work and feed out of your hand."
John produced his pipe and began to fill it with trembling fingers. "It's all very well for you," he said at last. "I suppose you're right. You always are. But I'm sure I don't know how we're to manage."
She came to his chair and bent over him with a light across. His helplessness and her increasing care for it engendered in her a new tenderness towards him.
"Why John, be a man! We'll be all right. It'll pass. We've only got to have a firm hand. They may not strike at all when it comes to the point. Don't you worry."
She left him and went to the kitchen where her pots and baskets of fruit awaited her.
She was glad that John would be content to stand back in the ensuing crisis. She wanted to face the strikers herself, to hit hard and be hit back again, to have people say worse things to her than she said to herself. Somehow she must end this conspiracy of adulation which led every one about her household to tell her what a wonder she was, when all the time she shrank from the thought of herself in loathing, and would have welcomed chastisement with scorpions.
And yet, if it did stop, if she could not hold her position in the village, how was she to live? What was there to live for?
She banged the great stewing-pan on the stove with unnecessary violence.
The carrier's cart drove up to the door and Violet entered with several parcels and a green baize bag.
"Put the groceries away please, Violet, and get me a towel to wipe my hands. Are those the things from the library?" Mary opened the bag and drew forth two novels and a sheaf of newspapers.
"I can't think why we get these things," she fretted, turning over the pages of the books. "I'm sure I never have any time to read them nowadays. Take them to Mr. Robson."
"And the papers, m'm?"
"No, no. Give me the papers or leave them there on the table."
Violet took the books. The newspapers lay among the jars and baskets. Mary resolutely continued her bottling. She did not want to see what David had to say in the Northern Clarion. She did not care what he said, not she! She had other things to think about than a mid-summer madness.
Recklessly she splashed the juice of damsons on the table. A crimson spot flared across the news paper.
Within that wrapper were words he had written. Perhaps as he wrote some recollection of Anderby and his visit there and her might have stirred him. She had not read one word from him since the letter he had written to her.
It was a pity to stain the paper, though. It would do so nicely for lining cupboards. Carefully she wiped off the juice with her apron. She was holding it so when Mike knocked at the door.
She let him in.
"Foreman said you was wishing to see me, missus."
"Oh, did he?"
Foreman was an old villain. Still, she had better say something to the man now he was here. She could not quite remember, though, what she was expected to say. It would not do for her to be at a loss—she who was accustomed to kitchen confidences ranging from Sunday collections to illegitimate babies.
"Now, look here, Mike," she began, "I want to ask your help."
Mike grinned.
"If there's anything in heaven or earth I can be doing for you, missus——"
"There is. We've got a trying time ahead of us, both we who are standing together and the men who are standing against us. I know that we can manage here, though, because you and your Irish friends will help us."
"Yess, indade. There's a few of us won't let any thing happen to you, Mrs. Robson. Just you trust Mike. It wasn't for nothing you brought him back to life. No, begorrah! There's many another will wish he had the chance."
"Yes, Mike, but it's not only working for me. There are other things too. It won't be easy in the village. Now I count on you to help with the other farms as well, will you?"
"Anything you ask Mike, Missus Robson, he'll do."
"And—and Foreman says you're being very silly about the men who've joined the union. Now, Mike, we mustn't have any fighting. Remember they can't help it. They're ignorant, foolish, driven to do foolish things by men who can talk cleverly but who are really just as ignorant as themselves. They can't help it. They've been fooled by others. Do you understand?"
"Yes, missus, I understand."
"That's all right, then."
Believing that she had ensured his peaceable behaviour during the next few days, she let him go.
On Saturday night Hunting came to tell them that the men were going to strike.
Sunday passed in a waiting dream of small comings and goings, the Willerbys driving over to discuss the future campaign in voices sunk to an awful whisper, as though they were in church—Foreman hammering at the door with anxious persistency, quite unbalanced by the necessity for changing the usual harvest routine, Shepherd, grimly humorous, assuring Mary he was ready to run a reaper over the whole farm if need be, John in a state of sulky restlessness like a sick cat.
After tea she fled from the house and went to the gate in the stable-yard.
Westward before her rose fold upon fold of the encircling hills, piled rich and golden beneath a tranquil sky. There was no sound but the crunch, crunch of horses feeding in the pasture.
She locked her hands on the highest bar of the gate and rested her chin upon them. The sunset colours before her paled from golden fields and crimson sky to grey and ghostly corn below faint clouds of primrose.
She closed her eyes and let the cool air blow across her forehead. She must have dozed for a minute, for when she looked up the wolds seemed full of life and movement. From the upland acres came heavy waggons behind great horses that strained and sweated with their golden load. In the harvest field moved the figures of men piling stooks and leading horses and forking sheaves into the lumbering waggons—stooping and lifting, lifting and stooping with a rhythm that swayed atune to the wind across the wheat.
Voices rang out, and laughter from the shadowy hills, as girls passed up the road to greet their homing sweethearts. Empty waggons bound for the hills again rattled merrily past with a load of singing children. The men wore dark loose clothes, quaintly fashioned, exposing their brown throats and sinewy arms. Among them rode the master on a grey cob, laughing with them and they with him as he paused to encourage a worker, and soothe a restive horse.
The light faded. Down the winding road came the last load home, while following in its rumbling shadow the women gleaned fallen straws and ears of corn.
The harvesters passed her, their forks across their shoulders, and as they passed they smiled and saluted her with friendly eyes. The children passed her, carrying garlands of pimpernel and poppies. They waved their flowers towards her, and sang with tired, merry voices. The girls passed, bearing thick brown jars emptied of ale, and baskets brimming with half-ripe blackberries from the hedgerow. The master passed her.
Thus they had harvested at Anderby since those far-off years when the Danes broke in across the headland and dyed with blood the trampled barley. Thus and thus had the workers passed, and the children waved their garlands following the last load home. Thus had Mary and other Mary Robsons before her welcomed back the master of the harvest.
She held out her hands to him with a cry of greeting.
The girls vanished along the road, their dresses fading like pale flowers into the twilight.
The master raised his head to her and for the first time she saw his face. It was not John who rode behind as master of the harvest at Anderby, but David—David with his eager face and smiling lips, riding in triumph behind the singing harvesters.
She called to him. Her voice rang strangely through the quiet air. She opened her eyes suddenly and stared across the empty field to find he was not there. She turned and ran, not looking back till she was in the house.
Outside across the waiting fields moved a quiet wind stirring the grey seas of wheat and barley to plaintive whisperings of sound. Bats flitted below the trees around the garden. In the pasture the horses tore at the dewy grass. One by one the lights vanished from the windows of the house.
The harvest moon rose.
Before six next morning Violet appeared at the door of the room where John and Mary lay waiting for the morning.
"Some men are in the yard. They want to see you," she said, her small face quivering with distress.
"All right," answered Mary. "I'll go. John, you stay in bed. Who is it, Violet?"
"Parker and Deane and Waite and—and Fred Stephens. Oh, m'm, he promised he wouldn't join. On Saturday he promised he wouldn't whatever they did to him."
"Never mind, Violet. I expect it's all right. We all have to do what the others do these days, it seems. You run along and get your clothes on. We may want breakfast earlier."
She dressed with deliberate care. It had come, then. She doubted no longer, and the certainty, after days' suspense, elated her.
John shook off the bed-clothes and thrust his legs out of bed.
"You'd better not come," she said, braiding up her long hair. "I'll see the men. The doctor wouldn't like you to get up so early in the morning."
The dogged look she knew well settled on his face. "I'm coming down," he said.
Together they went to the yard door. Mary kept in the background, standing on the kitchen threshold, her hands behind her clasping at the side post of the door. She watched, in the early sunlight beyond John's dark figure, the ring of hostile faces in the yard.
John spoke first.
"Well, men, what is it?"
Parker shuffled forward and spat on the flags by way of prelude.
He was evidently the head of the deputation, a Hardrascliffe man only hired last year and less bound by a tradition of service to his master than were the others. Mary smiled as she realized how the older men made a virtue of necessity by shifting the odium as well as the difficulty of speech on to a comparative stranger. She saw old Deane, who once worked for her father, twisting a greasy cap in embarrassed fingers. They were all there but Mike, Shepherd and Foreman. Waite, who had nothing to do with the farm any longer—even he had come and hovered in the background, manifestly enjoying the situation. Champions of liberty and progress! This was the outcome of David's fine talking. Mary wondered what he would think of them.
It was Parker who finally spoke.
"We ain't going to work to-day, maister."
"Oh, I gave orders to Foreman on Saturday night that the sixty-acre had to be opened up."
"Ay, you did."
"Well, then, why aren't you going to do it?"
"We can't make money at this job."
"Money? What's wrong with your money? Haven't you high enough wages? I've offered ten shillings more than last year."
Mary, locking and unlocking her fingers, endeavoured to curb her growing desire to push John's lumbering ineffectiveness aside, and herself deal with the envoys of the union. While she fretted Parker found his word, a drifting echo of Hunting's Saturday night oration.
"We want a living wage," he said.
"Living wage?" repeated John dully. This was an entirely unfamiliar situation, and he was equipped neither by temperament nor training to deal with unfamiliar situations. Mary realized the misery of his hesitation. "How much do you want?' he asked.
"Three pound," began Parker.
Waite elbowed him roughly.
"Three pund ten, you fool!" he prompted.
"Three pund ten, maister," repeated Parker. The "maister" came scornfully.
John's eyes glanced from one to the other to find a single light of friendliness. One by one the men turned away except Parker and Waite, who looked straight at him, one with surly defiance the other with barely concealed contempt.
"Look here, haven't I always treated you decently?"
John's voice sounded strained and feeble. He ran his hand round the collar of his shirt. Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead.
Mary could bear it no longer. She came forward and stood by her husband.
"Well, Parker, what have you got to say to that? Well, Deane, you know us better. Haven't we always treated you decently?" she asked sharply.
"Oh, ay." Old Deane shuffled clumsy boots on the stone pavement.
One of the boys at the back of the little crowd sniggered nervously. Deane glared round for a minute then replied, "Oh, ay. I haven't nowt to say agin you."
"You can't, you see. Have either of us done you a single bad turn since you decided to stay on ten years ago?"
"Nay, but——"
"Did my father ever hurt you?"
"Nay, but——"
"And are you treating us decently now?"
Deane looked up with a suspicion of the old twinkle in his eye.
"Nay, missus. We're treating you about as badly as we can. But a man must live. We've got oursens to look to."
"Oh. And aren't you living now! Which of you has been hungry in Anderby or ill-clothed or ill-fed?" Mary had quite taken her husband's place now, and John, glad to relinquish it, stood back among the shadows of the passage. "Hearing you weren't satisfied with what we offered we—all the farmers—talked together and are giving you what we can afford."
"Ay," broke in Parker. "An' if ye can't afford more than that we'll go to others who can. Farmers is tyrants, an' you as much as any on 'ere, and we'll have our rights in spite of you."
"Tyrants, are we?"
The men hung back a little ill at ease. Parker was going too far. What passed for sporting candour in the Flying Fox was little to their taste when confronting Mrs. Robson at six o'clock on a Monday morning.
"We've got to live," growled Parker, unable for the moment to think of a more biting retort.
"Oh, you've got to live, have you? I am surprised and you prefer to live on strike pay that doesn't amount to more than two or three week's subscription rather than work for your wages, do you? What's come over you all? I've lived at Anderby for twenty-eight years and my father lived here before me, and there's hardly been a wrong word between us and one of you. But now because a glib tongued townsman comes down from Manchester, we're tyrants, are we? Why didn't you speak before, eh? You needn't have come back at Martinmas unless you liked. There were plenty of other places where you could go. Well, if you want to work for us, you can work on our terms or not at all. We'll be masters of our own land, my husband and I, or we'll go somewhere else."
From the passage came John's beseeching whisper:
"Stop now, honey. Quiet them down a bit and they'll cave in."
Mary never turned her head. For the first time for several weeks she was thoroughly enjoying herself. A fine glow of righteous indignation replaced the humiliation and uncertainty that had lately assailed her. She felt mistress of the situation at last. Having found an outlet for the pent-up emotions of the summer, she determined to utilize it to the uttermost extent.
"Mr. Hunting says we're being crushed by capitalist tyranny." Parker triumphantly remembered more of his lesson. "And, by God, we'll have our rights!"
"Quiet 'em down now," begged John. Even his limited perspicacity had seen that the other men thought Parker had gone too far.
If Mary realized it, she made no sign of conciliation.
"Mr. Hunting," she sneered dramatically. "And who is this Mr. Hunting?"
"Our secretary—man from Manchester."
"Yes, your secretary, the organizer of the Northern Branch of the Farm Labourers' Union. A man you've seen for two or three weeks and about whom you know nothing. And you've known me for eight and twenty years, and you say I've never done you any harm. I tell you that you're being offered a fair wage. He apparently says you're not. Which are you going to believe?"
She stood in the centre of the doorway, her hands clasping both the side posts, her eyes bright with excitement. She only knew that this was really thrilling and dramatic. Unfortunately, she had omitted to ask herself whether it was necessary.
"We mun do what our secretary says. We mun have our rights." The old parrot cry echoed monotonously. Having exhausted their carefully learnt phrases, the men had nothing more to say. Deane whispered to Parker. Fred Stephens shuffled and blushed scarlet with perplexity and detestation of anything approaching a scene.
"You stop now, honey. Better offer 'em another ten shillings," urged John in a hoarse whisper.
But Mary would not stop.
"Yes, you'll have your rights though you don't know what they are. And you'll follow a hot-brained tub-thumper from Manchester, whose business it is to fool you left and right. Don't you know that he's being paid to fool you? Oh, dear, no, not you! You think you're all so clever and modern and you'll be as independent as the miners and have a strike on your own. Very well then, you can have it. We'll do without you. The weather's fine. There are some who have more sense than to be driven off their heads by a red-tied radical. You needn't think you are indispensable. We can manage without you far better than you can manage without us."
She paused. The men stared at her open-mouthed. This was certainly a new Mrs. Robson.
"Well," she cried. "Well? What are you going to do? Have you asked your precious union what sort of pay it's going to give you while other men get the harvest in? Why didn't you wait a bit before you started this game?"
There was no answer. The silence infuriated her. She had by this time lost her last vestige of self-control. A shrill note of hysteria rose in her voice.
"You'll be back here soon," she stormed, "whining for us to let you in again, and you'll find it too late. Then you'll know who's master. Now you can go. Strike if you like, but don't expect any sympathy from us if it isn't as nice as you think. Go on. Get out of here! Get out, you fools, and never let me see you hanging round the door again. Go to your precious Hunting—and if he can't feed you, then starve! I don't care. Get out of here!"
Not quite sure whether Mrs. Robson was mad or angry or merely making a fool of herself, and finding any of these possibilities equally embarrassing, the men began to turn away. Only Waite looked back.
"All right, missus," he said. "But you bain't shut on us yet."
One by one they filed out of the yard. Their footsteps died away along the road.
John faced Mary. For the first time in his life he was really angry with her.
"Well, you have done it," he said. "What on earth did you want to fly out like that for? I thought you had more sense."
Mary closed the door.
"And I thought you had more spirit," she stormed. "This has got to be fought out or we'll never be masters in Anderby again."
Her voice was still high-pitched. Her cheeks were flushed. Her breath came in sharp sobs. John looked her up and down, more bewildered than annoyed.
"I think you'd better go and lie down again, honey," he suggested mildly.
Mary turned on him with fury. Then suddenly as it had come her rage departed. Without a word she turned and fled up the passage her hands pressed to her mouth to check the sobs that seemed to choke her.
John looked slowly after her retreating figure and saw Violet's white face emerging from the pantry door.
"Is this the strike, sir?" she asked tremulously.
"Yes, this is the strike all right," said John.